Lighting a room is an art, rather than a science. IKEA designer Ehlen Johansson says the right lighting makes a room shine and is the cheapest way to "furnish" a room. But can the right lighting improve your sex life?

1. Using lamps and pendants that light a room from the side to help highlight the shape of bodies and create sexy shadows. Ugly overhead lighting can create panda-eye shadows and glaringly shine on all the flaws you'd prefer to keep under the sheets.

Bedside lamps are perfect to create side lighting.

2. Installing dimmers on main lights and making sure fluorescents are banned. Making sure there are candles around the room, preferably in coloured glass votives that will cast warm, gentle light.

Do candles get you in the mood?

3. Lighting specific points of the room rather than simply flicking on the overhead light or bedside lamp. Point the bedside lamp at a beautiful painting or photo. Equally, make sure the messy clothes corner is left in the dark.

Working lamps like this can be used to highlight focal points in a room.

Lamps, uplights, ceiling pendants and natural light are all important ingredients in lighting design. "You need ambient light , spotlights for working or reading and mood lighting to finish a room," Johansson says. "The best rooms contain all three. Bedrooms should definitely be about mood."

Whatever you do, though, don't buy this lamp, which Ehlen calls a "divorce lamp" - "You buy it in a box and have to put it together yourself. All you will do is fight before you have even turned it on."

The three rules of lighting are best explained here and here . As for lighting up to improve your sex life ... what's your verdict, tip or trick?

Paradoxically, the more space we have, the more storage we seem to need. And the more Howard's Storage World items that enter our abodes, the more clutter we collect.

I think bigger homes breed lazier choices. (My opinion, of course, but a blogger has to have one!) People tend to fill big homes with bedrooms that are never slept in, fireplaces that are never lit and built-in wardrobes full of musty old clothes that even the Op Shop wouldn't want. Smaller homes force people to regularly choose which items they want to keep, and which should be discarded.

"Loving, needing and using what you have brings clarity and peace of mind, and it facilitates focus," says professional organiser Lissanne Oliver Clutter isn't just plain old mess and dust, it's anything you don't either love, use or need. In other words, it's crap that we refuse to throw out.

"The stuff in our space can overwhelm us because we are in 'want' mode all the time," Lissanne says. "I think we should be wiser with our purchasing. We should buy better quality stuff that we really love or genuinely need."

Lissanne's new book SORTED! The ultimate guide to organising your life has a range of hints and tips to cut the crap from your life and make it run efficiently. They include:
- always having a "go box" near your front door to regularly store items that need donating to charity
- estimate the percentage of items in your home that you would need to keep to make you happy. Most people estimate between 40 and 60 per cent, Lissanne says;
- discard an item you no longer need at least once a day.

"Less is best, more is a chore," she says. Is that the same with house size? Should we all start aiming to live smaller to live better? What do you think?
Photo Sean Davey

Oh slave away, (sorry save away), and you too can own a slice of Australia! says the political pork-barrelling. The hoo-ha over housing affordabilitymeans both sides of government want us to create tax-free savings accounts to help first home buyers save for their slice of the housing pie.

One overly simple solution to housing affordability is to encourage more people to live in cheaper suburbs further away so they can "get on the property ladder" -- but would you do it? Could you head to outer suburbia to solve Australia's great housing issue? Vote in the poll to have your say.

Homes in primo locations close to the city and beaches tend to rise at a rate different from those in less attractive locations further out. Traditionally, the best-located homes increase in value at a faster rate than those that are poorly located -- but Australia's over-zealous property cycle occasionally disproves this theory. Right now, a homebuyer who bought out in the 'burbs may have been better off financially than someone that hocked themselves to the eyeballs to buy near the beach or city.

Australian Property Monitors statistics show the median price of houses and apartments in outer suburbs have risen by a greater percentage in the last 10 years than those in better located suburbs. In other words, the outer suburbs have paid off for the homebuyers who sacrificed to live there -- so why the hell aren't more of us trying to get a start out in the 'burbs?

I predict people will still prefer to hock themselves to the eyeballs to live in better locations, save commuting time and improve their lifestyle. Expecting people to buy property in more affordable suburbs further away is not a solution that seems to wash with the general population.

Oh, first home buyers are too picky! What ever happened to getting your housing start out in the suburbs? says the other side of the political pork barrel. Buy your first home in whoop whoop and work your way into the inner city when you've finally managed to create some equity in your home. These Generation Y types are such snobs and want everything for nothing. Click here or here to read stories which imply there may not be a housing affordability crisis if everyone moved 20km or more away from the CBD.

A load of tosh, I say.

There are two big problems with the school of thought that says housing affordability could be alleviated if more people were prepared to live way out in the 'burbs:
1. Women - as well as men - have to work, forcing families to make housing choices that save on commuting time. Living an hour away from work is something two-income families cannot consider given that childcare closes by 6pm and most parents would at least like a small window of time to eat dinner and kiss their children goodnight. Being within a 30-50-minute commute of workplaces is not a luxury for these families -- it's a necessity. A necessity they will pay through the nose for.

2. The rise of single-person households (the never-married, the divorced and the plain old 'I-refuse-to-get-a-flatmates') mean prime locations close to work (and fun things like restaurants and beaches) with excellent amenities that make single people feel safe walking the streets will always be popular. Who wants to live alone in a suburb miles from anywhere?

This wonderful story written by Julian Disney -- click here to read the full version -- has rightly pointed out that we need more than simple incentives to save harder to buy a house.

Rental policies which encourage affordability AND investment are important. The big revolution, though, would be improved public transport to speed up commutes for time-stressed homeowners. Given that people DO want quality of life (why else pay so much for housing in expensive locations?) surely we should be demanding more from our politicians?

So what do you think? Could improving public transport make the outer suburbs more attractive? And would it be easier for the younger generation to own property if they were prepared to live further out?

Could installing solar power in a home be an expensive load of hot (greenhouse-free) air?

With generous federal government rebates of up to $8000 for householders to install solar panels (sometimes called solar PV or a solar array), converting may seem attractive.

Yet the average solar power system still costs between $7000 to $12,000 -- even with the generous rebates -- which is something only a gold-plated Greenie could afford. And though solar power is free, renewable and can supply power back to the grid, EnergyAustralia says it is unlikely the installation cost of solar would pay back within 24 years.

"People love the idea of solar panels on the roof because everyone can see you have got your good eco brownie badge and your greenhouse credentials are in order," says Neco's renewable energy guru Jaga Park-Ross. "The sad thing is that saving electricity instead of trying to generate your own is a much better idea -- it's just not as sexy as installing PV."

EnergyAustralia's efficiency expert Paul Myors agrees, saying a 1kW solar power system saves around 1.4 tonnes of greenhouse gas a year compared to traditional electricity. "That's the equivalent of taking a car off the road for three months," he says. "Installing a solar hot water system -- which costs half the price of PV -- will save 2 tonnes or more."

Another energy expert pointed out that turning off the old second fridge that keeps the beer cold in the garage will save as much greenhouse gas as installing solar PV -- and it has no cost at all! Switching to 100 per cent government accredited Green Power will also reduce a household's emissions to zero immediately.

"I like to emphasise the importance of solar hot water systems, which are more affordable and will pay back within three years," Park-Ross says. "Even switching from electric hot water to gas will save on emissions."

For the scientifically minded out there, here is this fancy little graph which shows the cost of greenhouse gas abatement -- and solar power doesn't perform too well. Click here to find the link to download the graph.

So what do you think? Could solar power eventually become a cost-effective tool to reduce emissions? Or are householders better off doing boring old plonker things like turning off lights and upgrading to energy-efficient appliances?

This is an American video, but it gives you an idea of how costs of solar PV might one day come down.

Poor pavers. They get walked all over. Ignored. Forgotten about. But should we think about them more?

Pavers are the unsung hero of the outdoor room, the saint of inner city courtyards everywhere -- they offer a solid base to walk on and create pathways and entertaining areas ... but do we use them too often?

Would our outdoor spaces be better or worse without them? Should we be less inclined to pave and more inclined to plant greenery?

When those bi-fold doors roll back and people create their ideal bring-the-outdoors-in extension, pavers are the obvious choice. Yet sustainability experts like Professor Alan Pears says pavers laid in outdoor areas near large expanses of glass create a veritable solar oven to heat up a house in summer.

"Choosing dark coloured pavers is an even bigger problem, because they absorb heat all day and release it all night, just as you want to open up the house to cool down," he says.

Obviously pavers have their good points -- they are durable, and add to the overall style of an outdoor space. They come in all different shapes and sizes, and the appropriate choice will be determined by the architecture of the house and the look of the garden you're after.

For durability, however, landscape architect Paul Hertzig believes that clay pavers are the goods. He says there are some basics to consider in the decision-making process.

First, choose a colour -- even sandstone comes in variations ranging from creamy yellow to pinky yellow, while bluestone, which is has a fairly uniform finish, comes in a blue/blue and a gray/green.

Decide on a material -- clay is durable, cobble stones are expensive, crushed stone or gravel is quick and easy. Then you need to decide on a finish. Non-slip is a given, but stones can have a thermal finish (blowtorched to roughness), a tumbled finish, and so on -- what kind of edges you're after, how thick you want your pavers to be, how much you want to spend... and so on.

Last, but not least, you need to decide who's going to lay them -- if it's you and three mates, allow at least twice as much time as you'd expect. Everyone I know has laid their own pavers at least once in their lives. Some of them are still trying to finish the job. Others are living with the consequences of the 'paver that sank'. Let's just say it's not as easy as they make it look on TV.

Alex May is the author of Planning Your Perfect Home Renovation. She promises to tell it like it is when it comes to renovation, and hold your hand through the process. Stay tuned for tips, guidance and general guff about homes and how we live.